P-I archive: Rumor of Chief Sealth’s Queen Anne cabin

This cabin was at the southwest corner of Queen Anne Avenue North and West Republican Street, where the Mediterranean Inn now sits near Dick’s Drive-In and the Uptown Theater. This picture was taken in 1939, according to the original photo caption. (Seattlepi.com file)

Today from the Seattlepi.com archives we have a photo of a Queen Anne cabin that for years was rumored to have been built by Chief Sealth, the city’s namesake who was the leader of the Suquamish and Duwamish Native American tribes.

The cabin was at the southwest corner of Queen Anne Avenue North and West Republican Street, where the Mediterranean Inn now sits near Dick’s Drive-In and the Uptown Theater.

For years, newspapers referred to it as being built by Sealth. According to notes on the back of the photo, when it ran in the Post-Intelligencer in April 1939, the caption identified it as a log cabin “originally built by Chief Seattle.”

When Green’s Log Cabin tavern was moving out of the site in the mid 1960s, the incorrect reference also was made. (See another picture of the tavern here.) The rumor was fueled by reported photos of Sealth’s daughter, Princess Angeline, taken outside the cabin, architect and renowned Seattleite Victor Steinbrueck said at the time.

It was scheduled to be demolished that year, but the man hired to demolish it, John M. McFarland, wrote a letter to Seattle Times editor appealing to save the landmark, saying the property owner would allow preservation and offering $200 of his own money to help with saving the structure.

“Having read many stirring appeals by your staff and readers to save our historical landmarks, this is to let you know that now is the time to either act or, to but it bluntly, ‘shut up,’” he wrote.

But the following month, 87-year-old Lawrence Lindsley debunked the rumor with a photo of his family building the cabin. He had helped his father, Edward L. Lindsley, build it in 1889 – 33 years after Sealth died.

Edward L. Lindsley was the son-in-law of Seattle pioneer David T. Denny.

The cabin was first used as a real estate office by Denny when he sold property in North Seattle. Denny reached the Duwamish River in September 1851 and sent a letter to his older brother, Arthur, telling him to come to what’s now Seattle. That led to the Denny Party landing at Alki in November 1851.

The Queen Anne cabin was finished five weeks before the Great Seattle Fire of 1889.

“I sat on Denny Hill and watched the old town go,” Lawrence Lindsley told the Times in February 1966. “I was scared to death.”

A group helped save the structure, and in June 1966, it was reconstructed at Heritage Village in Federal Way. The Queen Anne site was home to a pancake house, and in the 1990s the building housed a Mexican restaurant.

But even after Lindsley debunked the Chief Sealth rumor, some people still believed it.

Today, the cabin still stands at Federal Way’s West Hylebos Wetlands Park, near the South Federal Way Park and Ride. To download a PDF showing how to find the cabin, click here.

Special thanks is due to Jeannette Voiland, librarian at the Hugh and Jane Ferguson Seattle Room of the Seattle Public Library. She helped find information on the cabin, including archive Times articles, after a request through the Ask-WA service.

As-WA, a service available online and as an iPhone application, provides access to a live librarian, 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, to every Washington resident.